In the forthcoming Book Towns, journalist Alex Johnson catalogues these most charming of tourist destinations. He spoke to Atlas Obscura about the pleasures of out-of-the-way places defined by their books.

Hay-on-Wye, in Wales, was the first one, and it started in 1977. How have book towns changed over the past few decades?

There’s tons of material on the web about all aspects of writing. Here is a list of 100 best websites for writers as proof. Yet, few sites manage their content so that it’s easy to get an overview of all the relevant writing elements that you might want to know about. I was thinking about this yet again as I scrolled through this 2018 list and specifically when I visited this website: Fiction University.

What caught my eye was the menu on the left side — it is given in full below as an example of the ease at which a lot of material can be summarized. Really nice! It’s easy to scroll the topics and the list underscores the myriad aspects to craft.

What if this existed for articles across the web? One of the things about writing advice is that it is diverse and often conflicting. Authors all have strong opinions but what works for some might not work for all. Also, some articles stand out as best of breed on a particular topic. A curated resource that quickly and efficiently helped writers navigate would be great…I’d certainly love it. Just have to find the time to create it…

Increasingly, computational linguists are able to detect patterns in how our moods are expressed in words. It’s not just the obvious, such as saying, “I’m happy or I’m sad,” but over- and underuse of classes of words.

Searching the ‘words’ of those suffering depression shows overrepresentation of ‘negative’ words as might be expected but also overuse of the pronoun ‘I’. Now, skewed patterns also include ‘absolutist’ vocabulary:

Our lab recently conducted a big data text analysis of 64 different online mental health forums, examining over 6,400 members. “Absolutist words” – which convey absolute magnitudes or probabilities, such as “always”, “nothing” or “completely” – were found to be better markers for mental health forums than either pronouns or negative emotion words.

The fact is that the scarcity mentality and the perpetual warrior style it demands are incompatible with any civilized political creed.

This quote comes from today’s New York Times opinion piece by David Brooks. It exemplifies how a big thought yields powerful writing. His concept of the world shifting from a philosophy of abundance to one of scarcity is an idea of the times. A massive idea that makes for a deeply memorable short piece. Massive ideas packed into small spaces are the stuff of Pulitzer’s. How will your writing change how the world thinks — and sees itself?